Harris takes the stage
THE ELECTION HADN’T GONE THE WAY SHE EXpected, so Kamala Harris needed a new plan. Late on the night of Nov. 8, 2016, the newly elected U.S. Senator gathered her campaign team in a drab gray room in the Los Angeles event venue where she was celebrating her victory—just as most Democrats were mourning the unexpected win of President Donald Trump. “This is some sh-t,” Harris said mournfully, describing a godson who’d come to her in tears. The staffers’ faces were grave and a siren wailed in the background as she groped for words to describe what she was feeling. “We’ve got to figure out how to go out there and give people a sense of hope,” she said.
The four years since that night have been eventful ones—for America, for the U.S. Senate and for Harris, tapped Aug. 11 as the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential nominee. The ambitious pol who won her first national office that day expected to be helping a President Hillary Clinton confirm a Cabinet and Supreme Court, craft comprehensive immigration reform and pass legislation to address climate change. Instead, she found herself in Trump’s Washington, crusading against the President’s polarizing nominees, searching mostly in vain for policy victories, and before long running to oust him.
HARRIS MADE A MARK IN HEARINGS BUT STRUGGLED TO FIND HER FOOTING ON KEY ISSUES
Harris’ time in the Senate is a relatively unexplored chapter of her record. Scrutiny of her background during her presidential run focused on her time as a prosecutor and her campaign positioning, both of which drew criticism from the left. On the near geologic scale of the Senate, her time there has been but a moment, and she began running for President just two years after she arrived. Yet Harris’ Senate profile sheds light on what
